The present invention relates to data processing and more particularly, but not exclusively, relates to the visualization of data from a data stream.
Recent technological advancements have led to the generation of vast amounts of electronic data. Unfortunately, the ability to quickly identify patterns or relationships, and/or the ability to readily perceive underlying concepts from such data remain highly limited. Moreover, the ability to meaningfully visualize large amounts of data presents an even greater challenge.
Data of interest can be static in nature, such as that stored in a given corpus; or dynamic in nature, such as a data stream. As a more recent area of interest, data stream processing poses several unique challenges. The time-varying information of a data stream typically has the characteristics of arriving continuously, unpredictably, and unboundedly without any persistent patterns. Data stream examples include newswires, internet click streams, network resource measurements, phone call records, and remote sensing imagery, just to name a few. The increasing desire to more immediately analyze data streams in various time-sensitive applications (such as Homeland Security) has created a particular interest in better visualization tools for data streams.
Thus, there is an ongoing need for further contributions in this area of technology.